Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin, who pushed to get the Aggies into the SEC, will resign in January, the school announced.

Loftin will return to the school’s faculty, where he’ll serve as a tenured professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin, left, helped his school get into the SEC. (AP Photo)

But it is his hand in athletics that will be his most lasting legacy in College Station.

Though a move away from the Big 12 killed the Aggies’ annual rivalry with in-state rival Texas, what the school gained in joining the United States’ most powerful football conference has been an immediate boost for the school. The Aggies went 11-2 this past season, and were the only team to beat eventual national champion Alabama.

“I will spend the next five months on programs and plans currently in development, such as management of the largest student body in the history of the school," Loftin said in a statement. "In the following period, I will work with Provost Karan Watson as well as many of our deans and system agency directors toward the launch of a new institute at Texas A&M – to serve the state, the nation and the world. I will certainly miss being ‘aggieprez’ (my twitter handle), but I will still be part of this great university and will be serving on the ‘front lines’ of the academy, side-by-side with those I love the most—our students.”